William Carey, (born August 17, 1761, Paulerspury, Northamptonshire, England—died June 9, 1834, Frederiksnagar [now Shrirampur], India) founder of the English Baptist Missionary Society (1792), lifelong missionary to India, and educator whose mission at Shrirampur (Serampore) set the pattern for modern missionary work. He has been called the “father of Bengali prose” for his grammars, dictionaries, and translations.

The society’s first missionaries, Carey and John Thomas, a doctor, went to Calcutta (Kolkata) in 1793. The following year, Carey removed himself from the society’s financial support when he became superintendent at an indigo plant in Mudnabati, Bengal. There he also preached, taught, and began his first Bible translation. Compelled to leave British Indian territory, he and his family moved to the Danish colony of Frederiksnagar, near Calcutta, in 1800. There he and Joshua Marshman and William Ward, collectively known as the “Serampore trio,” founded the mission described by the English philanthropist William Wilberforce as “one of the chief glories” of the British nation.

Appointed in 1801 to teach Bengali, Sanskrit, and Marathi at Fort William College, Carey translated the Bible into Bengali, Oriya, Marathi, Hindi, Assamese, and Sanskrit. He also translated parts of it into 29 other languages and dialects. He edited, with Marshman, a grammar in Bhotia and prepared six other grammars in different languages. In addition to dictionaries in Bengali, Sanskrit, and Marathi, Carey and Marshman prepared a translation of three volumes of the Hindu epic poem Ramayana. Having established a press at Serampore, Carey edited and published two works by horticulturist William Roxburgh, Hortus Bengalensis (1814) and Flora Indica (1832), and helped distribute prose texts for use in schools. His social work extended beyond education to urge the government to outlaw such practices as infanticide and suttee (in which Hindu widows immolated themselves on their husbands’ funeral pyres). He also encouraged the use of Indians as missionaries and led in the formation of the Agricultural Society of India in 1820.

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...translations were viewed as essential to the evangelical effort. First came renderings in those languages that already possessed a written literature. A group at Serāmpore (in India) headed by William Carey, a Baptist missionary, produced 28 versions in Indian languages. Robert Morrison, the first Protestant missionary to China, translated the New Testament into Chinese in 1814 and...

William Carey’s Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians, to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens (1792) became the “charter” for Protestant missions and produced the Baptist Missionary Society. In 1793 Carey went to India. His first letter to an England stirred by the Evangelical Revival resulted in the formation of the London Missionary Society...

...in England renewal came as a result of the influence of the Evangelical Revival, with a new surge of growth initiated by the activity of the English Baptist clergymen Andrew Fuller, Robert Hall, and William Carey. Carey, in 1792, formed the English Baptist Missionary Society—the beginning of the modern foreign missionary movement in the English-speaking world—and became its first...

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(1761-1834), pioneer of the modern missionary movement and a distinguished scholar of Indian languages. Born on Aug. 17, 1761, in Northamptonshire, Carey joined the Baptist church in 1783 and served as pastor at Moulton and Leicester. He helped found the Baptist Missionary Society and went to India as a missionary in 1793. There he translated the Bible into several Indian languages and translated the Hindu epic poem ’Ramayana’ into English. Carey died in Serampore, India, on June 9, 1834.